Religion in Catalonia is diversified. Historically, virtually all the population was Christian, specifically Catholic, but since the 1980s there has been a trend of decline of Christianity and parallel growth of irreligion and other religions. The secularisation of Catalan culture started in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but conscious disaffiliation from Catholicism has also been driven since the 1980s by the religious authorities' association with Francoist Spain. According to the most recent study sponsored by the government of Catalonia, as of 2016, 61.9% of the Catalans identify as Christians, up from 56.5% in 2014, of whom 58.0% Catholics, 3.0% Protestants and Evangelicals, 0.9% Orthodox Christians and 0.6% Jehovah's Witnesses. At the same time, 16.0% of the population iden